The culmination of all your efforts

Over there on the right, you can see a link to what I’ve called the Team Blog Project Repository. A repository is a facility where things can be deposited for storage or safekeeping - an appropriate name, I thought, for the collection of all the work the class has done over the last month. Its purpose is to provide a one-stop location where you can find out everything you need to know about the Software Development & Programming topic… as researched by you!

Head over there right now and check it out – the page is pretty self-explanatory. Enjoy!

That’s all, folks!

Congratulations, everyone – we’ve reached the end of the Team Blog Project. It lasted four great weeks, and I think the entire class has done a great job in making it work.

Today, many of you will be finishing up your Project Finalisation tasks from Tuesday. Once these are complete, everyone is to go over the posts they have written and check them for spelling, grammar and formatting. Make every effort to have clear, easy-to-read answers that are attractive and give helpful explanations of your subject matter. The quality of your answers in this regard will make up a significant portion of your assessment marks.

Since each individual’s posts is mingled with their team members’ posts on your blogs, it can be a bit tricky to go through and find the posts written by you alone. An easy way to do this is to go to your Dashboard, click on Manage, and then select your name in the Author… drop-down menu (see the diagram below), then click on Filter (on the right hand side). This will display all the posts written by you (including saved drafts).

Another thing to be careful of is making sure that your Project Finalisation tasks are made as Pages, not Posts. If you are unsure about the difference, ask another member of your team to explain (or Mr. Woo, if no one in your team knows!). 

Once you are done, fill out and sign a Completion Slip (ask Mr. Woo if you don’t have one), and hand it to Mr. Woo. Well done – you’re finished!

Project Finalisation

Here are quick links to the tasks for today’s lesson.

1. Team Member Pages
2. Section Pages
3. Peer Reviews

This week’s tasks are slightly different. Instead of creating posts, you will be creating Pages - instructions can be found when you click through to the task description.

Additionally, one team member must do task 1, another must do task 2, but three team members must do task 3. Read the task descriptions for a more detailed explanation.

Once you have made your own page(s), go to the relevant task post on this blog and (in a comment) post the address(es) of your page(s).

Dec 11 Task 3: Peer Reviews

Create 3 Pages that each contain a review of a 9IST1 team blog. 3 team members should each write a review on a different team blog. The reviews must include:

1. A link to the team blog you are reviewing 
2. The names of the blog’s team members
3. A rating out of 5 for the blog’s appearance and setting out, with a brief explanatory comment
4. A rating out of 5 for how easy the blog is to use and navigate, with a brief explanatory comment
5. A rating out of 10 for the quality of the blog’s answers, based on how well they explain and answer questions
6. A total rating (comprised of the 3 ratings above) and a summary review of the blog as a whole, pointing out strengths and weaknesses

To create a Page, go to the Dashboard, click on Write, and then select Write Page on the menubar.

Dec 11 Task 2: Section Pages

Create a Page for each section of questions that your team has written. There should be 4 section pages (Different Kinds of Software; Data Handling; Programming Concepts and Computer Languages). Each Page should include:

1. A brief description of what the section is about
2. Named hyperlinks to each of the answers that your team has written for the questions in that section

To create a Page, go to the Dashboard, click on Write, and then select Write Page on the menubar.

Dec 11 Task 1: Team Member Pages

Create a Page for each member of your team. The Page should include:

1. A brief description of the team member (must be approved by the team member bring written about!)
2. Named hyperlinks to each of the answers that the team member has posted

To create a Page, go to the Dashboard, click on Write, and then select Write Page on the menubar.

In the home stretch

Well done to everyone for getting this far in the project: we’ve flown past the halfway mark and are well and truly close to the end. Well done to the IST Killasz, who retain their iron grip on the lead. The project will be all finished by this Friday (14 Dec), so it’s anyone’s game up till then!

Below you can see the progress chart up-to-date as of Sunday afternoon. We’re almost there, everyone!

Week 8 Progress Chart (click to enlarge)

Computer Languages

Here are quick links to the questions for today’s lesson.

1. Language Levels
2. Data Structures
3. Errors
4. Documentation
5. Linguistic Diversity

Today’s questions are the last actual “questions” you will each have to answer – the tasks you will be completing after this to finalise your project are a little more different. More on that later!

As usual, each team member must select one question, research it and make a blog post answering it. Once you have made your own post, go to the relevant question post on this blog and (in a comment) post the address of your answer.

Dec 7 Q5: Linguistic Diversity

1. List as many different programming languages that you can find out about. Give descriptions of 3 of them and how they are unique.
2. What do the terms procedural and object-oriented mean when referring to programming languages?

Dec 7 Q4: Documentation

1. What is intrinsic documentation?
2. In programming, what are comments? What is their purpose?
3. Write up a list of pros and cons for writing documentation for computer programs.